Designing an Anti-Bullying Serious Game: Insights from Interviews with Teachers.

Bullying in schools is a widespread problem with serious and long-lasting consequences. We explore designing RE-Mind - an antibullying serious game that uses social robots to foster bystander intervention against bullying of peers among school-age children. To ground the design of RE-Mind in how bullying happens between peers at local schools, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 elementary teachers. Insights from this study highlight a need for novel anti-bullying interventions that (i) are relevant to children's present-day experiences, (ii) are designed by children and, thus, are relatable for them, and (iii) lessen the burden on teachers. In this work, we present an overview of our methodology and qualitative findings and discuss how this research informs the design of the game elements in RE-Mind. This work demonstrates the first steps towards designing an anti-bullying serious game involving social robots and contributes insights for designers of pedagogical robots and anti-bullying interventions for children.